#brittany cavallaro

[coffeeinthebackpack]

Pippa Fitz Amobi Ravi Singh

🤝

Charlotte Holmes Jamie Watson

[woke-up-in-harajuku]

posting some more of my older art, so here’s some of my favorite drawings i’ve ever made— this matching charlotte and jamie set <<33

i’m pretty sure charlotte wears converse on the cover of the book, but i *needed* to give her the wing-tipped boots so bad !!! best believe that if jamie watson wanted to steal them, so did i !!!

[amatchmadeindisaster]

Just watched Wednesday on Netflix. Wednesday and Enid are the OTP and totally give off Jamie and Charlotte vibes

[aaronstveit]

Charlotte Holmes (Charlotte Holmes series)

I am fully done with other people telling me what to do with my history. My past made me who I am. There is no way to wipe it clean. I am the evidence. If you look at me and see track marks and too-skinny arms and hands that know how to hold a gun and a brain that is sharper and faster than yours, then that is not my problem. Do you hear me? I have regrets, and I have made mistakes, but I am who I am.

[pipsbriberymuffins]

im in such a reading slump rn, im reading a study in charlotte but the chapters are so long its daunting me. jamie and charlotte are so cute and clueless tho

[illustration-alcove]

Florian Schommer’s illustrated book cover for Brittany Cavallaro’s Muse.

[quietflorilegium]

"I wanted to shout at her. I couldn't turn my feelings off like I was a machine, and as much as she pretended to be one – her spotless appearance, the precise way she spoke – I knew she couldn't either. Her emotions had to be roiling somewhere, deep below the surface, and I wanted to demand that she pull them out for my inspection. As if it were my right."

Jamie Watson, Brittany Cavallaro, “A Study in Charlotte”

[bribliography]

books read in 2023

— a study in charlotte.

by brittany cavallero

‪★ ★ ★ ★

"The two of us, we're the best kind of disaster. Apples and oranges. Well, more like apples and machetes."

goodreads review | books read in 2022

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Last of August | Author: Brittany Cavallaro | Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (2017)

[razreads]

The way to convincingly lie is to be convinced of what you’re saying. In the moment, you need to believe it. Thoroughly.

Brittany Cavallaro, A Question of Holmes

[sophiathesorceress]

The Last of August- Book Review

Rating: four stars

I highlighted SO many quotes in the Ebook version of this book that I checked out on Sora. The first book in this series figuratively killed me and resurrected me in the span of almost 300 pages. I had a similar expectation for this book and mostly, I got what I expected. Unfortunately, I can't document every thought I had while reading this book. What I can do though, is talk about a few things I thought about while reading.

-1. Charlotte and Jamie's relationship is a painful slow-burn, but well written and not super cringe, which is always nice to have.

-2. Jamie's narration is well-written and I enjoy how his stream of consciousness differs greatly from the chapters where Charlotte narrates. It feels like the author put a lot of thought into writing through different characters' perspectives and I found it easy to forget that it was written by an author and not the two fictional characters.

-3. I enjoyed how easily the author wrote about Europe and didn't make it seem obvious or annoying that it was written by an American author. Like, instead of Ms. Cavarallo thinking: "how should I make sure my readers know I know things about Europe? Let me describe things in too much detail and throw in some random facts!" she thought: "let me do my research, and do it well."

-4. Normally, I find "spunky, confident female characters" to be overused and plain annoying as hell. They are usually very cringe, most of their quotes are terrible, and they seem unrealistic and boring to me. Charlotte, however, is not one of these types of characters to me. She is able to show emotion and even though she is a fighter, sometimes cruel, and makes bad decisions at times, I didn't find myself wanting to punch her in the face every time she spoke. I found this to be a huge win.

-5. The "romance" scenes in this book are very well written and I enjoyed every word of them. Not everyone might believe this though.

Notable exerpts and quotes!!:

"As for you, girl,” he said, “you wanted to see your uncle? I’ll send you there, then,” and he pushed the mouth of the gun hard into her temple."

"It had been difficult. She was beautiful. We’d both been frustrated. She’d said my name. I never wanted to make her cry again. All I knew was that I didn’t want us to fight anymore."

"Excellent.” I paused. “Try to enjoy this. Today. It’ll be fun, I think, for you.” Until it wasn’t fun. Until he never wanted to look at me again."

"We did other things. Dicere quae puduit, scribere jussit amor—I may, for some time, think about his beautiful arms. They are lovely, like those of a statue I once saw when I was a girl, in a museum, somewhere, back when I hadn’t yet cried in my best friend’s bed, in a hotel in Prague at dawn."

"Do you want this?” he asked me, with effort. “I do,” I said, and hated my voice for breaking. “Can we—can we get under the blankets?”

"I had never pretended he was my father. Fathers were exacting and distant and cruel. Leander was none of those things. Still, I was charmed."

"Charlotte. There’s a girl on the roof. She says her name is Lena.” He cleared his throat. “She says she brought the helicopter you wanted?”

"Because, if you don’t, I will have my brother hit this warehouse twenty minutes from now in a precision strike that he’ll write off as a training exercise, and then, for good measure, I’ll do your house. Because I’m holding a gun, you cow, and I am perfectly capable of making your death look like a suicide.” In that moment, I wasn’t entirely sure I was bluffing."

"He’s largely muscle, which makes him quite heavy, and while this was something I had of course noticed (and yes, appreciated, I am in fact a heterosexual human girl), I didn’t like having to haul him out the door."

"My brother,” he growled, “is an addict, so yes, I do know something about it, and unless you just completely shattered her world in half, I can’t imagine this being a situation that . . .” He trailed off. All at once, the blood went out of his face. “Oh my God, Jamie. What have you done?”

"I kissed her slowly. Patiently. It was always too desperate between us, the clock nearing zero, the last secret about to slip out, or too cautious, or too clinical, an experiment gone wild and wrong. It was a huge, impossible thing, kissing your best friend, and each time we’d tried, we’d managed to fuck it up so badly that the next felt even more impossible. I wanted to give her an out. I always did, especially after Dobson. But God, it was hard. When she leaned into me, her fingers tracing the hollow of my throat, I had to clench my hands not to touch her back. Then she slipped a hand underneath my shirt, and I forced myself to pull away."

"I needed to find Holmes, though I wasn’t looking forward to it. Breaking news: I got into a strange car where someone told me I was useless. How was your afternoon?"

"It’s heavy in her arms, but it’s pleasing to look at it. Maybe the package talks. It’s witty. It’s flattering. It makes her feel special, and she likes that feeling. And one day Charlotte leaves it somewhere in public, and poof, it is taken from her. Charlotte is sad. Then furious. Charlotte will do anything to get her present back. Horrible things. Things that will end in her death, or imprisonment. We don’t want Charlotte to do these things.”

"I slipped my arms around Marie-Helene’s waist and kissed her like a man coming home from war. Here was another point under the “monster” column: it was a good kiss. She leaned into me, she put her hands in my hair, she pulled me down into her like she wanted me, like I wasn’t the terrible person Holmes thought I was, like I was somehow good enough for a girl like her."

"Because of course. Of course I’d be expected to make a move here. Touch her neck. Kiss her; hell, maybe sing her an L.A.D song—do something to live up to the ridiculous texts Holmes had been sending."

"She looked innocently up at me from the top of her book. “Bloody hell, I made a bleedin’ mistake.”

"No.” I was going to murder Shelby, and creatively."

"No,” I groaned. “No. Absolutely not. This is like a L.A.D. song. This is like my sister’s L.A.D. fan fiction.”

"Apologize to them? For what—having the misfortune of producing you?”

"I’m willing to call in men, right now, to take you to Lucien,” she continued. “He might be done taking it slow. I’m sure he’d be willing to speed things up. Break your hands. Kill you. Let’s see if I can get you out of the country and to Thailand before your bear of a brother can stop them.”

"Did nobody teach you any respect?” Phillipa exploded. “No one! Did nobody tell you that being clever isn’t enough?"

"I wandered the house like some Victorian ghost."

"There, in the guest room, at the end of my bed, she was easing the heels off her feet. She dangled one from a finger as she looked up at me, biting her lip, and it should have been ridiculous, but instead it made something in my chest burn."

"She’d almost kissed me. I’d wanted her to. Everything was fine."

"For some reason, it felt dangerous to breathe, and so I didn’t. I held myself as still as I could, except for my hand running down her soft, shining hair to her cheek. Her skin was pale in the dark, but as I traced my thumb along her cheekbone, she flushed the barest pink. I bit my lip, and her mouth opened, and without thinking about it, really, I let one finger brush against her mouth, and then her hands slid up my chest, pulling against my T-shirt and then pulling at the collar, pulling me down toward her until I could feel myself pressing her down into the mattress, and my nose dug into her neck and she laughed, she exhaled and her breath was soft and a little sharp, and I tangled my fingers in her hair, the way I’d wanted to for months now, all of this I’d wanted for so long, and she angled her head as though she was about to kiss me—"

"For the first time, I realized that maybe my presence was more of a curse than a comfort."

"This? This had never happened before. I could feel her hot breath, the brush of her mouth. I bit back a sound at the back of my throat and kept myself still, terrified I might scare her away or worse, that this might break apart the both of us. She ran a finger down my chest. “Is this what you want?” she asked me, and with that, my willpower broke completely. I couldn’t answer, not with words. Instead, I dropped my hands down to her waist, intending to kiss her the way I’d wanted for months—a deep, searching kiss, one hand tangled in her hair, her pressed up against me like I was the only other person in the world. But when I touched her, she recoiled. A rush of fear went across her face. I watched as that fear turn to rage, and then to something like despair."

"The best and worst thing about Holmes was that she heard everything I didn’t say along with everything I did."

"The thought made me sick, made me want to climb the walls. It made me want to lay it all out at her feet so we could begin to fix it."

[coffeeinthebackpack]

Pip and Ravi, Stevie and Nate, Charlotte and Jamie, Daisy and Hazel have made me realise that I have a thing for smart reckless detectives and the protector of those chaotic detectives.

[woke-up-in-harajuku]

another old charlotte + jamie set ! i made these a long while before the cover redraws. i honestly quite like how i drew charlotte’s still, and i can finally say i’m content with the jamie one.

when i drew him, i had no idea how to draw the hairstyle i had envisioned him with (it’s a mix between this one and the cover one), so i settled for this, and it honestly doesn’t look bad 😭 i tend to be a bit hard on myself when it comes to my art, especially with the ones i make for the charlotte series as it’s my favorite.

still, baby steps 🤞🏻 happy to report that i’ve been growing fond of old my art more and more

[amatchmadeindisaster]

[readyforbooks]

Be careful tonight. And maybe shower. You smell awful.

—Brittany Cavallaro, A Study in Charlotte

Part of the he smelled like series

[pipsbriberymuffins]

my copy of a question of holmes arrived early, crisis averted